Alpha Zero (Alpha LitRPG Book 1) by Arthur Stone (top 5 books to read TXT) 📕

for the cause,” Rycer moaned again, then added resolutely. “Go on, do it!”

“Wait!” I nearly screamed, though a second ago I wasn’t even going to open my mouth.

Krol, who was about to grab the arrow’s tail, turned toward me.

“What is it?!” he barked viciously.

I raised my hand, displaying a broken piece of arrow found in the sand. One of the many that the archer had shot at Atami.

I proceeded to explain, picking my words carefully.

“See the tip? It’s not held by glue, but rather mounted on the shaft. And mounted well. The arrow nearly made it to the temple—see the bump from it pressing from inside the skull? It’s wedged tight in there. If you pull on it, the tip will remain. And that means death.”

“The kid is right,” Rycer drawled with resignation. “I won’t make it with a piece of metal in my head.”

“The trading station has a healer, he’ll take care of you,” Krol reassured him, though his own tone was far less than certain.

“The arrow is enchanted. It’s doing something to me, I can feel it. The magic is ruinous, it’s draining the life right out of me.”

“But the healer—”

“Shut your trap already!” Rycer blew up, then groaned from the flash of pain punishing him for the sudden stress to his vocal organs. “I told you, it’s draining the life out of me. And it’ll keep draining for as long as the tip is inside. Even if I make it to the station, what then? There ain’t no healers there, that’s why they use potions. And potions are expensive. Treatment there would cost me more than what I earn in a year. And, again, the metal is enchanted—it ain’t some rusty nail in my backside. I ain’t got many options. I’m too far from my home village and our healer. So, it’s either death or bondage...”

“So what are we going to do...” Krol threw up his arms in frustration.

At that, I offered a suggestion. “Take the tip out from the other end.”

“What? How?”

“Easy. The arrow went into the eye-socket and through to the temple. It must have missed the brain, considering that Rycer is still alive. The temple bone is broken, I can see the tip from here. If you push on the arrow, the tip should pop out of the temple. Once you remove or saw off the tip, you can pull it out like you were going to before.”

“Push it further into his head? Are you nuts?!” Krol gasped.

Cursing mentally at the dunderhead, I tapped into my reserves of patience and explained again.

“His head is already pierced through. You merely need to finish the job. A new hole in the temple beats an arrowhead stuck in the skull, every time. But I’m not here to argue. It’s just a suggestion, do with it what you will.”

“Grow a pecker first before you start spewing suggestions!”

“I was born with one that’s bigger than yours.”

Another gasp, this one more from rage than surprise. “What did you say?! Why, I’m gonna...”

“Shut up!” Rycer barked anxiously. “Before you start measuring. Both of you are assholes!”

“But he—” the coachman persisted, still aghast.

“I said shut up!” Turning his surviving eye my way, Rycer added firmly. “Go on, kid!”

“What?”

“Do as you said. Take out the tip. Krol can’t do it, his hands are shaking. Yours ain’t shaking, so you do it.”

“I’m no healer.”

“So what? Go on.”

“My hands are about to start shaking, too.”

“Why? They ain’t shaking now, so keep’em still.”

“They always shake when I remember about my ‘misplaced’ coin purse.”

“Listen, kid. If you don’t take out this arrowhead, I’m going to take out your eye with my free hand. You’ll end up just like me. Now hurry up, I ain’t got much patience!”

The soldier was indeed on edge—that much was clear. And with his size, one hand would be more than enough to make me a cripple.

I didn’t have much choice in the matter.

Surgery was not my strong suit. The only operation I had ever borne witness to, in which my own heart was cut open and extracted, hadn’t afforded me much practical knowledge. Nothing that I could apply to this situation, anyway.

The one thing I had going was that I wasn’t afraid of blood. My hands weren’t shaking, though that alone wouldn’t do the job. Weak as I was, the force that I was able to apply wasn’t enough to push the arrowhead through the temporal bone. I pushed and pushed, Rycer groaned and gritted his teeth, but nothing was happening.

It was time to change tactics. Shifting my position a bit, I pressed my full body weight into the warrior’s arm, only using my hands to hold on to him. He began to yell about being shredded alive—which wasn’t an unfair assertion—but we were finally making progress. The temple began to swell until the skin broke and blood streamed from the open wound.

I kept pushing until, at last, the arrowhead popped out all the way with one final crunch of the temporal bone. I pulled on it, but it held firm to the shaft, so I turned to Krol.

“I can’t pull it off. You try—or saw it off, if you want.”

Watching the proceedings with wild eyes, he handed me a knife.

“Chaos take me! You saw...” he muttered hoarsely.

The caravanner’s hands shook so badly that I nearly cut myself taking the weapon from him. But there was more to it than that. In this absurd world, any item you wanted to handle had to conform to you. A degenerate like me could use only the plainest items, and in limited ways. And so this blade with an ugly wooden handle objected to being defiled by the touch of my hand, making it hard to operate.

But there was even more to